Samsung smartphone series: how the Galaxy S, M, A and Note lines differ | Articles | Phones

In some cas­es there is almost no dif­fer­ence between the S and M T‑shirts, in oth­ers it is huge. The sit­u­a­tion is sim­i­lar in the lines of smart­phones. But with clothes, every­thing is much sim­pler: you tried it on and it became clear what suits you. But when buy­ing a new smart­phone, the dif­fer­ence in char­ac­ter­is­tics, for exam­ple, Galaxy S and Galaxy M for an unpre­pared user is not at all obvi­ous. We talk about the fea­tures of all avail­able Sam­sung phone series so that you can eas­i­ly make the best choice.

Pho­to: flickr.com

Samsung today: what smartphone lines exist in 2021

In this arti­cle, we will not dwell on dis­con­tin­ued phone lines that are not sold in stores. Let’s just men­tion that the com­pa­ny replaced the J‑series with A‑marked smart­phones. (By the way, there are rumors that Sam­sung may aban­don the top Galaxy Note line, but there is no offi­cial con­fir­ma­tion yet).

The names of Sam­sung smart­phone mod­els begin with the word Galaxy, and then there is a mark­ing that dis­tin­guish­es the lines: M, A, S, Note, Z Flip and Fold. Almost all gad­gets show good sales fig­ures and find their fans, with the excep­tion of the Fold series, whose devices are far from afford­able for every­one. Also, the Z Flip line did not find much pop­u­lar­i­ty, since these smart­phones cost almost like flag­ships, but many peo­ple found it incon­ve­nient to use, so we won’t even dwell on these mod­els. And what is the dif­fer­ence between the rest of the line, now we will fig­ure it out.

Flagship smartphones Samsung Galaxy S series

The S‑series are uncom­pro­mis­ing flag­ships that are strong com­pe­ti­tion for the iPhone. If ini­tial­ly this line was cre­at­ed as a response to expen­sive and mod­ern Apple gad­gets, now the oppo­site sit­u­a­tion is devel­op­ing. Smart­phones iPhone on a num­ber of indi­ca­tors remain catch­ing up, bor­row­ing var­i­ous ideas from Sam­sung.

For exam­ple, it was the Kore­an com­pa­ny that was the first to exper­i­ment with wire­less charg­ers or cam­eras from sev­er­al mod­ules. Each gen­er­a­tion of Galaxy S is a demon­stra­tion of the lat­est tech­no­log­i­cal achieve­ments: for exam­ple, these smart­phones are con­stant­ly at the top of var­i­ous cam­era phone rat­ings. Even Amer­i­cans, with their bound­less love for Apple, are increas­ing­ly switch­ing to Kore­an flag­ships, not want­i­ng to return to the iPhone.

Sam­sung S‑series smart­phones have the largest screens among phones of all lines of the man­u­fac­tur­er, with the excep­tion of Note mod­els. The dis­play occu­pies almost the entire front pan­el. With the release of each new gen­er­a­tion, the frames are get­ting thin­ner, and the edges are smoother. This has a pos­i­tive effect on ergonom­ics: the phone is more com­fort­able in the hand due to the absence of sharp cor­ners.

S‑series smart­phones tra­di­tion­al­ly receive the lat­est tech­ni­cal stuff­ing, sur­pass­ing com­peti­tors. For exam­ple, the flag­ship Galaxy S21 Ultra is equipped with a pow­er­ful proces­sor, one of the best cam­eras on the mar­ket and a large high-qual­i­ty dis­play. Depend­ing on the con­fig­u­ra­tion, the mod­el has from 128 to 512 GB of inter­nal mem­o­ry. The younger series of Sam­sung smart­phones (A and M) lag behind the flag­ships in this para­me­ter.

The Galaxy S21 Ultra was the first S‑series smart­phone to fea­ture a sty­lus. Usu­al­ly it comes with Galaxy Note smart­phones. Pho­to: bt.dk

Samsung Galaxy Note — a line of smartphones with huge displays

These are actu­al­ly the same Galaxy S, but with a larg­er screen and a sty­lus includ­ed. The series appeared in 2011 and has come a long way from niche gad­gets for geeks to the most cov­et­ed flag­ship devices, the demand for which is increas­ing every year.

In 2019, for the first time in his­to­ry, the com­pa­ny intro­duced 4 Galaxy Note mod­els at once: 10 Lite, 10, 10+ and 10+ 5G. All of them were equipped with the same proces­sors, had a triple cam­era and a fin­ger­print scan­ner hid­den in the screen. The mod­els dif­fered from each oth­er only in the size of the screens, the amount of built-in mem­o­ry and bat­tery capac­i­ty.

Two ver­sions were released in 2020: Note 20 and Note 20 Ultra. They dif­fer in dis­play size (6.7” ver­sus 6.9”), max­i­mum amount of RAM and per­ma­nent mem­o­ry, bat­tery capac­i­ty and cam­era char­ac­ter­is­tics. Of course, every­thing is in favor of the Ultra mod­el.

• If the Galaxy S flag­ships are designed for con­sumers who pre­fer to have the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy at their fin­ger­tips, then the top Galaxy Note line is more suit­able for busi­ness peo­ple and cre­ative pro­fes­sion­als. Such users need a pro­duc­tive smart­phone with a large dis­play to work, and the includ­ed sty­lus and spe­cial soft­ware cre­ate addi­tion­al con­ve­nience in solv­ing many prob­lems.

Samsung Galaxy A smartphones — a series of “people’s” phones

We called the Galaxy A line of folks, since almost all of its smart­phones are afford­able. This is where most of the mod­els come out. In 2020 alone, the Kore­an com­pa­ny released almost a dozen A‑series smart­phones: A01, A01 Core, A11, A21s, A31, A41, A51, A71 and A72. The cost of gad­gets in the line­up varies great­ly — from “state employ­ees” for 6,000 rubles (A01 and A01 Core) to more advanced devices, such as the A72 (about 33,000 rubles), which are com­pa­ra­ble to many Chi­nese flag­ships.

Thanks to the mod­ule of 4 cam­eras, the Galaxy A72 looks almost like a flag­ship. Pho­to: bgr.in

The main fea­ture of the A series is the good bal­ance between price and qual­i­ty of smart­phones. They dif­fer from the Galaxy S flag­ships in the absence of sophis­ti­cat­ed fea­tures such as wire­less charg­ing and the use of less expen­sive mate­ri­als for the man­u­fac­ture of the case. Each user of an A‑series smart­phone can be sure that its hard­ware stuff­ing ful­ly cor­re­sponds to the cost. At the same time, you do not need to over­pay for advanced options that are not use­ful to every­one.

• The Galaxy A line of smart­phones will suit those who want to buy a phone with the per­fect bal­ance between price and spec­i­fi­ca­tions in the bud­get or mid-range price cat­e­go­ry.

Samsung Galaxy M smartphones — a series of “mid-budget” with a powerful battery

This line of phones in the assort­ment of the Kore­an com­pa­ny appeared rel­a­tive­ly recent­ly — at about the same time when the J‑series gad­gets stopped com­ing out. At the same time, it can­not be con­sid­ered that the Galaxy M replaced them, since the most bud­getary gad­gets of the man­u­fac­tur­er were pro­duced with the J mark­ing. And the cost of mod­els of the M series reach­es 30,000 rubles.

Ini­tial­ly, this series was posi­tioned as an ana­logue of the Galaxy A line of smart­phones. The lat­ter were active­ly pro­mot­ed through large-scale pro­mo­tion­al cam­paigns and exhib­it­ed in all stores. Mod­el Ms, in turn, were sold only via the Inter­net and were hard­ly adver­tised. Now both series are avail­able in the win­dows of brand­ed stores.

The Galaxy A series focus­es on the opti­mal com­bi­na­tion of price and per­for­mance, as well as on the visu­al com­po­nent: smart­phones in this line look ele­gant and mod­ern. All of them have a thin body, an in-screen fin­ger­print scan­ner (on mod­els released from 2020) and slit-in front cam­eras.

As for the Galaxy M, cheap­er mate­ri­als are used to make the cas­es of these devices. Smart­phones most often have a water­drop notch for the front cam­era and a fin­ger­print scan­ner locat­ed on the back cov­er, and not under the dis­play. The main advan­tage of phones from the M line is more capa­cious bat­ter­ies. In terms of per­for­mance, these gad­gets are not infe­ri­or, and some­times even out­per­form com­peti­tors from the A‑series.

The new 2020 Galaxy M51 has a fair­ly bud­get plas­tic case. Pho­to: ntnews.com

• Sam­sung Galaxy M series smart­phones are suit­able for users who want to get the best bal­ance between the cost and char­ac­ter­is­tics of the gad­get, as well as its max­i­mum auton­o­my (of course, cor­re­spond­ing to the smart­phone class), but do not pay much atten­tion to design. If appear­ance is more impor­tant, it is bet­ter to take a clos­er look at the Galaxy A line.

Samsung Galaxy Fold — what is the difference between this unusual series of smartphones

A few years ago, the engi­neers of many man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies set out to cre­ate a mod­el with a large fold­able screen. Sam­sung was one of the first to launch a fold­able gad­get on the mar­ket — Galaxy Fold. The cost of new items was almost 2 times high­er than the price of the brand’s flag­ships. The device received mixed reviews, and instead of being called a fold­able smart­phone, this gad­get gained the title of a fold­ing tablet. In gen­er­al, in real life, the Galaxy Fold smart­phone has not found pop­u­lar­i­ty.

In 2020, the com­pa­ny intro­duced the sec­ond gen­er­a­tion of the gad­get — Galaxy Z Fold 2, the cost of which starts from 150,000 rubles. Per­haps in the future, these smart­phones will be able to replace the devices of the Galaxy Note line, but today such a high price is not jus­ti­fied.

Galaxy Z Fold 2 looks cut­ting edge, but not every­one is will­ing to pay 150,000 rubles for it. Pho­to: tomsguide.com

Comparison of the flagship Galaxy S21 Ultra with the younger model Galaxy A72

For clar­i­ty, let’s make a small com­par­i­son and find the dif­fer­ences between the Galaxy A and Galaxy S series using the top mod­els of both lines as an exam­ple: Galaxy S21 Ultra and Galaxy A72. They began to be sold at approx­i­mate­ly the same time — in Feb­ru­ary-March 2021. With­out dwelling on the design and oth­er fea­tures, we will col­lect the main dis­tin­guish­ing fea­tures in a com­par­a­tive table:

Hav­ing stud­ied the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the Galaxy A72, we can con­clude that the smart­phone is quite inter­est­ing by mod­ern stan­dards, and it costs almost three times cheap­er than the flag­ship. Not all users need a 120Hz refresh rate or record-break­ing per­for­mance, and even few­er need 10x opti­cal zoom. Wire­less charg­ing, more inter­nal stor­age, and a more advanced cam­era are all nice perks, but not every­one is will­ing to pay that much for them.

Thus, when choos­ing a smart­phone, a lot depends on the bud­get and per­for­mance require­ments, which depend on your tasks. For exam­ple, if you want to play the lat­est in the mobile gam­ing indus­try at max­i­mum graph­ics set­tings, you still have to fork out for the flag­ship of the Galaxy S line.

*All prices are at the time of pub­li­ca­tion of the arti­cle